Founding Piggly Wiggly was the first self-service grocery store. It was founded by
Clarence Saunders on September 6, 1916 (although it did not open until five days later due to delays in construction), at 79 Jefferson Avenue in
Memphis, Tennessee. A replica of the original store has been constructed in the Memphis
Pink Palace Museum and Planetarium, a mansion that Saunders built as his private residence, which was later sold to the city. At the time of its founding, grocery stores did not allow customers to gather their goods. Instead, a customer would give a list of items to a
clerk, who would then collect them throughout the store. Piggly Wiggly introduced the innovation of allowing customers to go through the store, gathering their goods. Piggly Wiggly Corporation secured the self-service format and issued
franchises to hundreds of grocery retailers to operate its stores. The concept of the "self-serving store" was patented by Saunders in 1917. Customers at Piggly Wiggly entered the store through a
turnstile and walked through four aisles to view the 605 items sold in packages and organized into departments. The customers selected merchandise as they continued through the maze to the
cashier. Instantly,
packaging and
brand recognition became important to companies and consumers alike.
1920s and 1930s The success of Piggly Wiggly was phenomenal, and other independent and chain grocery stores changed to self-service in the 1920s and 1930s. At its peak in 1932, the company operated 2,660 stores and posted annual sales in excess of $180 million. In November 1922, Saunders attempted a
short squeeze on the substantial short interest in the stock, running the
share price up from 40 to 120 and profiting by millions on paper. The Stock Exchange Governors responded by deciding that a
corner had been established in Piggly Wiggly and removed the stock from the Board, eventually forcing Saunders to turn over his assets to the banks that had financed his leveraged position. Saunders reputedly lost $9 million in the attempted corner. Following these events, the company was divided into strategic units, which were sold to regional grocery chains, including
Kroger,
Safeway,
National Tea, and
Colonial. In 1935, all 179 Canadian Piggly Wiggly were also sold to the
Canadian Safeway division, which merged with
Sobeys in 2013. Prior to this, three stores in Texas were sold to the emerging
H-E-B in 1927. After losing control of Piggly Wiggly,
Saunders had no further association with the company. However, he remained interested in automated shopping, with which he experimented initially with the
Keedoozle store until he died in 1953.
Name and logo According to the Piggly Wiggly website, Saunders was "reluctant" to explain the origin of the company's name. One story recounts that while riding a train, he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence, which prompted him to think of the rhyme. Someone once asked him why he had chosen such an unusual name for his organization, to which he replied, "So people will ask that very question". ==Present company==